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League of Nations

 

            The League of nations was set up to eliminate war between nations. They needed international cooperation in social and humanitarian matters of global nature. Britain and France supported the idea of the League as a new mean of conducting international relations. The league was to use the combined might of all its members in collective security, to deter aggression and maintain world peace. The power of the League resided with the major powers in the council. It was the council that determined the manner of League activity. Sixty-three nations took part at one time or another.
             The League of Nations accomplished some good work in the 1920s and 1930s in the social and humanitarian fields. Its commissions and public debates helped publicize the need for cooperative action on a number of global problems. Special attention was given to: {1} the need for the just treatment of non self-governing peoples; {2} traffic in women and dangerous drugs; {3} status of women and children; {4} problems of communication and transportation; {5} the need for disarmament and arms control; {6} the need for free trade; {7} prevention of disease and other social and health problems.
             The successes of the League in the social and economic spheres were more than offset by its failure to eliminate war. The Manchurian Crisis of 1931 brought the flawed nature of the League when faced by military force. The Japanese occupation of Manchuria was the first test of the League's willingness to bring collective security measures to bear against an aggressor. The ineffectiveness of the League in dealing with a war between two of its own members was not lost on other expansionist regimes.
             A second test of the League's peacekeeping ability arose from the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Italy's invasion of the African kingdom was part of an attempt by the Mussolini regime to regain imperial prestige long since lost to his people.


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